


early and often

by badwrites



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anal Fisting, Angst, Background Relationships, Beta/Omega, Blindness, Consent Issues, Dirty Talk, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21943156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwrites/pseuds/badwrites
Summary: 4x8.Amos is usually in control of his heats. Trapped and blind, he doesn't this time.Jim lends him a hand.
Relationships: Amos Burton/Jim Holden
Comments: 24
Kudos: 112





	early and often

"Tell Amos that I'm sorry."

Chaundra might still be staring blankly at the same spot of dead-alien-ruin wall, but her posture reflects her guilt: The slouch of her shoulders, twiddling of her thumbs, the uneasy shift on the crate she's hunkering down on.

Huddled under plastic tarps in the darkness, the deep sense of paranoia and foreboding is inescapable. They're all trapped here together, at each other's throats, boxed under meters of water and shielding themselves from a painful death from the fluorescent slugs swarming the place.

Not even to mention the mass blindness. The one in which Jim is the only exception, for whatever reason. They're working on that.

Sitting beside her, Murtry grins widely. He slaps a hand on her shoulder, and shakes it. Chaundra passively allows him to so, head jerking with the movement, as he enthusiastically jabs a finger towards the spot he incorrectly assumes Holden is standing at.

"You heard the woman, Holden. She'll follow her orders to stay at her post. With me, and not running after your friend."

Murty's voice is unreasonably smug and triumphant considering the situation, and he pronounces 'friend' like it's a disease.

Murty continues, "I suppose Amos will simply have to deal with his condition himself! It's only fair, after all, considering it is unarguably his own doing that it's gotten to this point."

"Right," murmurs Jim, completely uninterested in taking that kind of bait in a moment like this.

Instead, he takes a careful step towards Chandra. Hinges at his waist to speak lowly her blank face. "Hey. Call for me if you change your mind. I honestly think he'd want you to be the person to help him."

Her expression is still glum as she silently nods, and raises a hand to wipe away some excess green sludge from the corner of her eye.

Amid the ever-increasing pit of hopelessness in his chest and annoyance with this shitty situation is a sudden well of pity for her. Jim gives her shrinking figure one last glance, before he turns on his heel to walk the short distance to the biologist's tent.

"Oh no, she _absolutely_ will not."

Murtry's snide tone cuts sharply through the air after him, completely unwarranted.

Jim pauses in his step. Then, he shakes his head and keeps walking.

Asshole.

Dr. Elvi Okoye is seated just where he left her, listlessly tapping her nails on the makeshift desk in repetitive sequences. Her brow furrows when she hears him ducking under the tarp, and her fingers still.

"Holden? I didn't hear the mass spec's completion tone…"

"No, I'm here for something else." When Dr. Okoye leans forward in her chair, he clears his throat and continues, "Amos. He's, uh. Going through a heat."

"How?" Evli's eyes widen, voice trembles. "Are you saying that hierorepression implants are failing as well?"

"No. No, it's — he doesn't have one, don't worry." Jim speaks as reassuringly as he can. He raised his hands, too, but puts them down the second he remembers she can't spot the gesture. "He, uh, deals with it. We give him pre-heat injections when we're in a bind. Just… not this time."

There's no question about it: Not having repressor implants as an omega on a ship (without a consenting alpha available) is stupid. But at this point, the crew of the Rocinante has pretty much gotten used to it. They've already nagged him as much as they can. Amos fucks a lot of people on shore leave and rarely tends to disappear into his room for a couple of days. That's just what he does.

"Oh," Elvi says, carefully. "How is he doing today? I take it that he has light heats, if he's willing to take that risk."

"He does, but I've seen only a couple of them get this bad. And he's not taking all of," he gestures only to himself, "this well. Psychologically."

"It doesn't help that he's in close quarters with so many people," Elvi says, slowly.

"Yeah," Jim agrees. "That's another concern."

There's an uncomfortable moment of silence as they process the possibilities.

Jim didn't like how the mass of Belters huddled under the same tarp seemed to be slowly shifting towards Amos over the last few hours. Amos didn't like it, too: Jim can still see him gritting his teeth, arms curled around his own legs, gripping the blowtorch white-knuckled.

Jim could smell him, and he's not even an alpha.

"Do you have anything that can freeze a heat? Can you make something?" he asks, with a hint of desperation.

She shakes her head. "No, I only have the materials to make prophylactics. Pharmaceutically treating a heat falls under the work of a reproductive clinic."

"Nothing at all? Come on. There has to be something that can help."

Elvi stills, blind eyes flitting back and forth. She raises a finger as she thinks.

Eventually, she says: "I can modify some stock testosterone to derive 2,3-Isoxazolethisterone... it could probably tap the brakes on Amos' heat. I've never seen a person without a menstrual cycle take it, though. Does he menstruate?"

Well, Jim could recall a few times when Naomi complained of missing tampons or pads. He's pretty sure that they found them used as makeshift temporary insulation in the innards of the ship, though. If he has his own stock, Jim hasn't seen it.

"Uh, I don't think so," Jim says, only slightly unsure.

"Hmm. Well, a single dose shouldn't hurt his natural hormone production too badly. I'll get that done... later, when I can."

"Not now?" he asks, disheartened.

"It's not that it would take long. It wouldn't," Elvi says softly, "but the microbiota infecting our eyes —"

"Of course," Jim cuts her off. "Priorities."

"I will produce him a dose as soon as possible. I promise." She's sincere.

"Can I do anything to help in the meantime?"

"Yes," Elvi says, simply. It takes her a moment for her to realize that Jim actually needs extra instruction. "You can stimulate his episogonium."

"How would I do that?" For a fleeting second, Jim isn't even sure that she doesn't know he's a beta.

"Manually?" Elvi is starting to deliberately slow her speech, as if he took a knock to his head. To be fair, Jim does feel pretty dumb right now.

"Manually how?"

"Manual. Hand." Elvi jabs her hand up, and slowly curls it into a fist.

Oh. Well, that makes sense.

She continues, tone raising impatiently: "Did they really not bother to cover omega biology in the scope of your education? The view that heats can only be managed and ended by the introduction of an alpha's penis is shamefully hierarchonormative —"

"Hey, hey, quiet down. You can give me this lecture later. I'll do it," Jim says sheepishly, then lowers his voice, "though I don't think I'm the right person to do it. Me and him, we're not close in that way."

They really aren't. Amos has been considerate enough to leave the rest of the crew out of his business... so to speak.

"You don't have to sexualize it." She says it reasonably, as if that's an easy thing to achieve. "It's really a reproductive health intervention."

"Yeah." He mulls it over. Quietly, Jim acquiesces: "Okay. Hey, do you have gloves?"

"There should be nitrile ones under the table over there." Elvi jabs her finger to her left, changes her mind about the direction she's facing, and then jabs it to the right. "Wait, there. Good luck."

* * *

Amos isn't doing so hot.

Jim's seen him get this heat-starved before. Hell, he's even seen him get so bad he was all but jacking off in public and licking his chops at anybody who so much as stepped into the same room as him. That was pretty funny at the time, even though Alex ended up filling and distributing spray bottles with biologically-safe coolant to deal with it.

This isn't funny. Then again, this isn't just the heat.

Sweats and shakes aren't unusual for a heat, but this brand of erratic behavior isn't 'ravenously horny tinged with stupid'. He recognizes the terror in Amos' wide, cataract-ridden eyes, the danger in the way he gnashes his teeth and digs his fingernails into his hands. Jim recognizes this bit as something that happens outside of Amos' heats.

This is how Amos acts when Amos feels trapped and hopeless and spiraling.

At least Jim is smart enough to have the tiny meandering angular hall already secured from the deadly slugs through intricate stretches of plastic shielding before he brings Amos to it. After all, he doubt he'd just sit still and happy as he'd wrap the place.

As it stands, even bringing him there is difficult. Slinging Amos' heavy arm over his shoulder and grabbing at his hip isn't enough to move him when there are moments where he's non-compliant and acting like a stone, or even worse, actively lashing fists out.

And Amos' musk is overpowering at this proximity. It makes Jim dizzy, and slows him down too.

They move at a snail's (yeah) pace, a loop of Amos acting like he doesn't want Jim to lend him a hand, Jim offering to bring him back because he'd be damned if he'd do anything to Amos without him being alright with it, and then Amos violently insisting that they keep going.

They're almost there when Jim offers up what he thinks is a useful tidbit of information, but immediately regrets it when it comes out of his mouth.

"I tried to get Chaundra to help you —"

"She said no, huh?" When Jim glances to his side, Amos' teeth are bared, wild. His words are slurring from his heat, as if he were drunk. "Hey, you think she's becoming kind of a _problem?_ "

There's a hint of malice in that makes Jim immediately nervous for Chaundra's well-being.

"Actually," Jim carefully clarifies, "she said yes. Murtry said no. He's not gonna let her leave the RCE tents."

Jim can feel the silent, manic laugh vibrating in Amos' chest. Then he nearly stubs his toe the moment he catches the sudden spurt of scent into the air. Fuck.

"Then give Murty to me instead." Amos' tone is low, dark. It makes Jim's hair stand on end. "Lemme rip his head from his neck. I'll use his alpha cock to clean my colon."

"Jesus, Amos. In that order?" Jim asks, not sure if that's a joke.

Amos licks his lips. "Yeah. Fuck it. Who gives a shit?"

Jim doesn't really know what to say to that; he just uncomfortably chuckles, and keeps leading them forward.

It doesn't take long for them to get to the nook that Jim has prepped for them. It's remote enough from the site that nobody should hear or smell them… and hell, what would they do if they did? Walk blindly through a slug-infested labyrinth?

"Here," Jim says. "This place is safe."

Amos doesn't reply. He just drops his arm off Jim's shoulder, abruptly pulls away from his grip.

"Hey, you know," Jim finds himself saying, "if you don't want to…"

"If I don't want what?" Amos snaps back.

Jim can see him swaying on his feet, leaning towards him. He looks deranged. Face plastered in sweat and eyes huge, they're lined and filled with watercolor splotches of green.

"If you don't want me to help you with this wave, I'll —"

Amos lifts his head, defiant. "You dragged me out all the way out to here. What the fuck else are we gonna do? Huh?"

"I was gonna say," Jim enunciates carefully, "we'll head back."

"Nah." Amos jerks his head side-to-side. He points vaguely in Jim's direction. "No, you're gonna fuck me."

"Actually, I wasn't planning to." Well, depends on his definition of fuck. Sort of a semantics issue.

Amos' hand lashes out for a hold. Jim freezes, startled, when he gets his hand around his bicep and squeezes. "Yeah, you are. Come on."

"I — I'm not," Jim stammers. "I'm here to help you."

"Bullshit, Holden. The fuck you are."

"Amos…"

"Dragging me out here in the dark…" Amos is pulling Jim closer, breathing into his cheek. "Where I can't run, and nobody can find me..."

The pheromones are getting to Jim's head. They pull his face closer to Amos', when he should be turning his head away. Now he's looking at Amos' lips, but his voice still wavers: "Cut this shit out, Amos. I mean it."

"Got me where you want me," Amos whispers, eyes hazy.

It's increasingly hard to think straight, to parse the actual meaning in this. Jim has to hold his breath for a second, try to starve his brain of Amos' scent (all biological: sweat and blood and sex — and weirdly, dust). Jim knows Amos' psyche enough to know that this isn't just a game.

This is some kind of really fucked up projection.

"To hell with this," Jim says, autonomy coming back to him. He wrenches his arm away from Amos, takes a step away. "I'm bringing you back."

Amos' mouth opens, chest shaking in a silent laugh as he throws his arms wide. He's stepping away, too, blindly backward. Eyes dreamlike and lost, bleeding emerald.

"Hey, hey. No, you're not," Amos says resolutely, then fumbles for the zipper of his jacket.

It's not a strip-tease, that's for sure. Amos tears off his clothes like he's on fire. Pulls the zipper down, shrugs his jacket off. Then grabs the hem of his shirt and throws it over his head without any pause.

This heat. Any other time Jim sees Amos shirtless he's perfectly fine, but right now he's left salivating like it's a Pavlovian response. Amos is sculpted, aesthetic. Thick and defined, the contour of his Adonis belt drags Jim's eye from his hips to that undeniable tent between his legs. Fuck.

When he tries to lower himself to the plastic-wrapped floor — awkwardly bending at his knees, trying to feel for where the floor starts with one hand while keeping balance for the other — Jim musters up the courage to step forward to help him down. Surprisingly, Amos lets him rest his hands on his forearm and upper back to allow them to come down gently. He's nearly complacent when he rolls onto his back, the only sign of distress being the shudder that runs through his body as he does.

Then, there they are. Amos lying tense on his back, body slick and hot with heat. Jim sitting bewildered just outside of his legs, regretting that he didn't ask for a cloth mask as well as the gloves.

Right, he reminds himself, the gloves. He fishes them out of his back pocket as their form of balled-up blue, and wrings them open.

When Jim pulls the first one over his fingers and snaps it over his wrist, Amos' voice warily rises. "What's that noise?"

"I, uh, got gloves from Elvi," he says, feeling a bit silly now about bothering with them. Still, he puts on the second one. Allows himself to flex his fingers out, contract them back in. He marvels at the sight and feel of the thin rubbery stretch over his knuckles.

At the sound of rustling on Amos' part, Jim looks back up from his hands. His mouth suddenly feels really, really wet.

"Medical kink?" Amos asks, lowly. He's in the process of raising his hips to shimmy his unbuttoned pants down his hips, his ass. His thick and neglected cock slightly bounces to his movement. Hard, suffused with blood, an angry red head peeking from a flushed foreskin and pulling up on a full sac.

There's a wet smear across his dick, like he's been slowly leaking this entire time.

"Uh, no," Jim says dumbly. He can't stop staring.

Amos doesn't fully disrobe. He doesn't bother taking off his boots and as such, doesn't bother with kicking off his pants. By the time he pushes them down his quads, he brings his knees up to touch his chest and pushes them down to his raised ankles.

Now, he's so open to Jim's eyes it's downright obscene. The dusting of light-colored hair between his ass cheeks has been coated and mussed in a shining layer of slippery slick. And his hole, a dusty brownish-pink, wetly pulsates and winks intermittently. And his cock, visible between the triangle of his thighs and his bundled pants, intermittently hops as it drips a steady and thin layer of pre-come. And Amos' empty infected eyes, starkly contrasting his heaving chest and lip caught between his teeth.

Oh yeah, this is absolutely going to end up in the 'memories Jim will jerk off to' vault. The 'lifeguard losing her top in a swimming pool' memory ran its due course two decades ago, anyway.

Amos' voice startles him out of his stupor. "You wanna take a fucking picture, Captain? Or are you gonna touch me?" he asks, voice tight.

"Yeah, I... sorry," Jim swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth, "you look really good."

Amos just chuckles lowly, and spreads his legs as far as his pants allow him to.

Jim slowly scoots himself closer to Amos, ending up sitting straight on his knees. With one gloved hand, he cups his ass. The other traces a careful circle, then two, around his hole with a forefinger. When he strokes a direct path over it he can feel Amos shiver in anticipation under his hands — and he can feel his own cock jump in his pants in interest, too.

With all the slick forming at his entrance, his finger slips in with no resistance at all. Amos is too wet, burning up inside. It's not hard at all to crook his finger, listen to Amos hiss and hear him shudder when he hooks onto the soft tissue of his prostate.

Fascinated by his reaction, Jim strokes over the little patch, toys with it. Watches, enraptured, as Amos' dick bobs gently to his manipulations. The weak, clear beads of precome leaking onto his crunched, powerful abdomen. When stops massaging his prostate to explore higher up, he gets a little gratification from Amos' disappointed grunt. Because, yeah, he's the one giving him pleasure. It's all on him.

Jim easily glides his finger up to his last knuckle and…. there it is. He can feel it pulse around his finger, the weird thin sequential ribs of muscle that drive omegas cuckoo. Yeah, he can see how it works, now; it pulses greedily at his fingertip, clearly not enough for him.

"Fucking betas," Amos says, breathless and impatient. "I got ten toys more useful than you."

"Workin' on it," Jim murmurs, as he works in the second finger. It's still easy. There's a droplet displaced by the insistent press and pulse of his fingers inside Amos, slick getting wetter and wetter.

"Can't decide if your self-control pisses me off or not. Any — _ah_ —" he breathes as Jim's fingers begin to scissor widely, stretching him out, "any... alpha would've been brain-fucked by now. Pounded me unconscious ten minutes ago."

Maybe, Jim absently thinks, it's actually good thing that it's him and nobody else. Someone he actually likes. Someone he trusts. Someone who wouldn't take advantage of him at his most vulnerable. Because hey, he's not gonna lie to himself that Amos isn't fuckable at this moment (he definitely is), but at least his biology isn't screaming at him to ruthlessly dominate like an alpha would.

Not that Amos is easy to dominate, obviously. But like _this?_

Introducing the third finger in is when there starts to be a bit of resistance. Jim slows down, works it patiently as Amos hisses and arches, his legs trembling. Jim almost asks if he's okay, but holds off when he realizes the answer will definitely be some variety of 'shut the fuck up.'

Amos finally grabs a firm hold of his own cock, finally accepting that Jim probably wouldn't (which, hey, he was tempted...). He pulls himself off with hard slow strokes, looking increasingly needy, more and more frustrated...

...and moans through gritted teeth when Jim, playing the rim with his pinkie, manages to slip it inside. He really starts to fuck him with insistent curls of his wrist, stroking past his prostate to those sensitive, hungry rings of muscle above. The _squelch!_ of his knuckles passing in and out of his slicked ass is filthy, as are the slapping sounds of Amos desperately trying to get himself off without any success.

"Your cock out?" Amos pants, awkwardly trying to reach with his free hand towards where he assumes Jim's crotch is (his navel, apparently).

"No," Jim immediately smacks it away with his other hand, "and I _told_ you, I'm not gonna fuck you."

"Come on, Captain." He's desperate, rocking into his hand. "Might as well get your dick wet. Can't lie to me and say you're not thinking about it."

Yeah, he's thinking about it. Amos is wet and hot and wants him, right now, no questions asked. He thinks about how good it'd make them feel. And then Jim thinks about tomorrow.

"Maybe," Jim says, slowly. "But not like this."

"Naomi? I think she'd be cool with it. Let you both have me together, later."

A lurid image pops up in Jim's head: Amos, head thrown back in ecstasy, sandwiched between the two of them. Naomi's legs pinning their hips, a laugh curling into a moan. Jim behind Amos, sliding into him, kissing Naomi across his shoulder.

"Thought you didn't fuck people you like," Jim says. He moves his fingers independently inside Amos, now, deliberately plying him open in all directions.

"You're — _uh!_ — right... I don't. I'll, _ah_ , probably fucking hold it against you guys." Amos gasps. "Forever."

That's probably not entirely a joke.

Jim insists, "Not gonna stick my dick in you." Then: "You okay with my whole hand?"

Amos snarls more than smiles. "Do it, pussy."

Jim slides his fingers out, appreciating the weak noise that comes from Amos' chest and the sight of his hole hungrily pulsating on nothing. Then he clusters his fingers together and starts to slowly but surely penetrate him.

He takes it all barely batting an eye until Jim has his bottom knuckles slowly edging in, rocking them side-to-side. Then, when he pops them in, Amos goes, well, kind of nuts. Swearing loudly, gasping, grunting. Desperately grabs for something with his non-furiously-jacking-off hand, ends up holding the sole of his own boot.

" _Ah!_ Holden, I — shit, _oh_ , fucking —"

And Amos' insides are now pulsing furiously at his fingers so much it nearly _hurts,_ like he's trying to suck him in and keep him there.

His own need is becoming a distraction. Jim feels so flustered, so goddamn hard at Amos just needing him, he quietly presses the heel of his palm into his crotch. Grinds it through his pants to give himself a bit of relief. He's pretty sure Amos either doesn't notice, or is too busy to care. What with Jim working his whole hand inside him, and all.

He guesses he's knotted him by the time he gets his palm through, curls his hand through the wet and stretchy muscle into a fist. Amos yells raggedly and hoarsely like he's being goddamn murdered, and Jim can only hope that he guessed right with the distance that nobody actually caught onto it. His grip tightens on himself, coming slow but steady rivulets over his own clenched, desperate hand.

First time Jim's actually been there to watch him come rather than hearing it through a cabin door.

The sensation of Amos' body actually interpreting it as a knot is _really fucking weird_ , to say the least. It's like it does the rest of the work; pulls the entirety of Jim's hand inside him with a hard contraction of those omega sphincters so that all he can see is his wrist and a thin strip of blue glove disappearing into his crewmember.

Amos' muscles tighten around him, clench so hard Jim realizes he can't actually take out his hand.

So, he waits a few minutes; waits until Amos finishes and shakes out the last drop of cum over himself from his still-hard cock. Waits until he drops his head back, body loose and lazy and exhausted.

Except his insides, apparently. They're still 'knotted', so to speak.

"Amos..." Jim says, and tries to gently tug his hand out to no avail.

"I'll let you go when I'm done," says Amos, and yawns.

"Seriously, I can leave you here and come back, but I have to check up on —" Eyes. Slugs. Ending this early.

"I said I'll let go of you when I'm _fucking done_."

"Okay. Cool," Jim says, and hopes his hand doesn't lose circulation by the time he lets him go.


End file.
